Trump's 'king of energy' gets GOP stage

Energy isn’t a marquee event at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

But the topic will have its moment in the spotlight Wednesday night when the man dubbed the “king of energy” by Donald Trump will take to the podium at Quicken Loans Arena.

Harold Hamm, who like Trump has made billions of dollars in his career, sees the candidate as someone who will rally behind independent oil and gas producers such as himself as they try to regain their footing in a glutted market.

“President Trump will not be trying to eliminate oil and gas production in America. That’s what’s been going on,” Hamm, the CEO of Continental Resources, one of the biggest independent producers in the U.S., said in an interview Monday. “We’ve had death by a thousand cuts with this current administration doing everything possible to stop this energy renaissance in its tracks and put oil and gas operators out of business.”

In fact, many producers are struggling. According to the international law firm Haynes and Boone, 85 operators in the U.S. and Canada have filed for bankruptcy since the beginning of 2015 and “many more” are likely to do so over the rest of the year.

But the industry’s main dilemma is a global surplus of oil that has driven prices down by as much as 70% since June 2014, not regulation. And to a large extent, the oversupply is a result of a resurgence in U.S. oil production over the last few years, thanks to companies such as Continental that use hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling to unlock shale reserves.

That said, Trump and other Republican candidates see President Obama and the presumptive Democratic candidate for president, Hillary Clinton, promoting a regulatory agenda that concentrates on combating climate change at the expense of fossil fuels, especially oil and coal.

Reinforcing that notion is the newly released Republican Party platform which is virtually silent on climate change while calling for an “all of the above strategy” for energy, one which includes support for private-sector development of technologies for cleaner combustion of coal in power plants, a roll-back in Environmental Protection Agency regulations and a skeptical eye for government aid to renewable energy.

It’s a view that differs sharply from the one Democrats will present at their national convention next week, when worries over climate change, acclamation for Obama administration environmental and alternative-energy policies and calls for even more steps likely will take center stage.

For Hamm, Wednesday’s convention appearance won’t be his first encounter with Trump since he met the real estate tycoon several years ago and backed his run for the White House in April.

Within weeks of that endorsement, Hamm joined Trump at an oil conference in Bismarck, N.D., where the candidate praised Hamm for his company’s development of shale reserves in that state and others.

“I guess we can consider Harold the king of energy. There’s nobody like him,” Trump said at a news conference at the gathering. “He knows more about it than anybody I know.”

Nor is this the first time Hamm has been in the limelight of a presidential campaign. In 2012, he was an energy adviser to Republican Mitt Romney and contributed $985,000 to a pro-Romney super-PAC.

Now Hamm is predicting a bright future for the oil sector and its workers if voters put Trump in the White House, and he even claims the recent stock market surge is a sign of what can happen with a Trump win.

“We’re seeing a rally of about 1,400 points. I refer to that as the Trump rally,” Hamm said, referring to jump in the Dow Jones Industrial Average since June 27. “People are sensing that we’re going to have a president who’s going to be pro-jobs, pro-business.”

If all goes well for Trump and Hamm, the fall will bring an election win for the candidate and more profitable returns for oil producers.

“The fundamentals are in favor of higher prices. We suggested they would be higher by year end,” Hamm said, citing increasing global demand for oil and declines in production, including production by Continental and other U.S. operators.

Monday, West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark price for U.S. crude oil, closed at $45.24 per barrel, its lowest level since May.

“I said it would be $60 by year end. I think that could be a conservative number,” he said. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

Bill Loveless — @bill_loveless on Twitter — is a veteran energy journalist and podcast host in Washington. He is the former anchor of the TV program Platts Energy Week.